


I guess you call this love; I call it service

by lotesse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Ghosts, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-03
Updated: 2008-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam shook his head, looking back out of the window. Avoiding Dean's eyes. Trying to remember the exact way her hair looked in the sunlight. "No," he said dully. "I don't know what it is."</p><p>Tag for 3.14, "Long Distance Call."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I guess you call this love; I call it service

Dean still couldn't fucking figure it out. Three beers later, he wasn't pissed off anymore. Wasn't even really irritated. But he couldn't figure it out. "Hey Sammy?" Sam looked up from the tv screen, and his face was pale and bluish in the reflected light of the cathodes. "Why didn't you even wonder about the calls from dad? Like, not even close?"

*

Sam was going to kill the jerk. He didn't - he couldn't - and Dean didn't even care, wouldn't even let Sam try to save him. The panic was always there under his skin now, had been since Broward County or maybe even before that. It was like a drumbeat: Dean's going to die, Dean's going to die, Dean's going to die. He couldn't sit still because of its thrumming, couldn't make his hands stop moving, kept having odd impulses to straighten and neaten the life around them in the hope that he would be able to find a solution if Dean's clutter stopped getting in his way.

He sighed, sinking down onto the manky motel room bed with a wince. Dean kept fighting him and he didn't know what to do. Only two months left. He didn't want to fight with his brother any more; he'd yelled at his father the day his father died, and he didn't think he would be able to take losing Dean in the same way, losing him so absolutely and completely.

As soon as they'd got back from casing the Waters place, Dean had left. Gone for food, or something. He hadn't really been in a talkative mood, and Sam hadn't pushed his luck. He was sitting on an ugly bedspread in the middle of Ohio, looking out the window and wondering if he'd have a brother by the time his birthday rolled around.

His cell rang tinnily from his back pocket. Mindlessly, he picked it up and flipped it open. He didn't check the id. Nobody ever called him but Dean and Bobby, anyway. "H'lo?"

Her voice was a whisper. She sounded anxious, unsure, maybe even scared. "Sam? Is that you? I don't -"

He thought he might rip in two, bone and sinew shredding down the linea alba, cracking him neatly down the center. He thought he might break like blown glass. He thought he might crumble into dust.

She laughed softly on the other end of the line, but she still sounded achingly vulnerable. "Sam, please say something, I think I'm going crazy." God, she thought she was going crazy.

Sam answered her mechanically, speaking without breath. "It's okay, Jess. It's okay."

"Sam." Her voice was warmer, more sure. More real. "Where are you, anyway? Did you drop out of school or something?"

He laughed, and then sobbed, and then did his level best to speak to her. "You were right. I crashed and burned without you. Jess…"

Her breathing quickened. "Listen, Sam, I have to go, but I swear I'll call you back. I swear. I've missed you so much, you have no idea, Sam, I promise I'll call back as soon as I can. I love you."

He heard the click as the call disconnected. He looked down. The caller id read "sha33," and that was the same number that had called Ben Waters, but Jess…

The door banged open as Dean tromped in, throwing himself down in one of the armchairs. "We figure out what this thing is yet, Sam?" he said. "Old man Waters hearing funny voices, or what?"

Sam shook his head, looking back out of the window. Avoiding Dean's eyes. Trying to remember the exact way her hair looked in the sunlight. "No," he said dully. "I don't know what it is."

*

He waited to hear from her all day. He fingered his phone in his suit pocket as he picked up his rental car. He didn't know what to do. Ben Waters had killed himself, but Lanie seemed okay - freaked that ghosts existed, but okay enough to make jabs about his suit. And the woman Dean had talked to, she seemed more than okay, reunited with the husband she'd lost so long ago. Jess. Her name was his heartbeat. It was so strong that for the first time in he didn't even know how long, the litany of Dean's going to die faded from his conscious mind. The thought of her was like oxygen flooding the choking anxiety he'd been carrying around, burning it up through sheer, glorious sensation. Jess, Jess, Jess his mind chanted, and he almost wanted to yell with the joy of it.

Except that she still hadn't called him back, and he was starting to get a little worried about it.

*

"I mean, Dad? You really think it was Dad?" Dean was storming around their motel room eating up the brown carpet in long, directionless strides, and Sam's brain felt numb. Dad had called Dean. Of course he had, why would he call Sam anyway? Smiling at him from beyond the grave in no way indicated that that bridge was mended, and Sam knew it. But Jess still hadn't called him, and clearly she could have, if Dad was in on the spirit phone now. Was she okay? Was something keeping her away, or did she not care, or had she come to her senses and realized that it was all his fault that she was dead and she shouldn't speak to him ever again because what kind of man was he?

"What happens if he calls back?" Dean said, and it felt like a punch to Sam's stomach, softly driving the air from him, but he couldn't let Dean see it, couldn't let him find out about Jess. Jess..

Jess still hadn't called. The plastic stars on the wall shone up at him, and some vague part of his brain chattered away about symbols of hope and eternity. What should Dean say? He still hadn't answered the question, and Dean was waiting for him to say something. "Hello?" Sam suggested, and Dean looked at him like he'd grown a second head. Shit. Clearly, that hadn't been the right answer. Why hadn't she called?

He could tell that Dean was mad at him, but that was nothing new. Dean was always mad at him anymore. "Hello? That's what you come back with, hello?"

Dean left, and Sam sat still with his head in his hands, waiting.

About twenty minutes later, his phone rang. He grabbed it, and answered, "Hello? Jess?"

"Sam, I'm sorry I couldn't call you back sooner, I'm still not quite sure how this works."

"How what works"? he asked her, almost dizzy with relief and excitement and love.

She sounded so real, amused and wry and affectionate and Jess. He thought his heart would burst. "Being a ghost, I guess," she said. "Although somehow I sense that you're a lot less freaked out about this than you should be."

He exhaled. "God, Jess, you have no idea."

*

Sam laughed. They must have been talking for at least three quarters of an hour, and it felt at once like a lifetime and no time at all. He breathed in her voice, the sound of her breath, and words tumbled out of him like rivers. "No, but I think I'm talking to professors more now than I did as an undergrad. Jess, it's crazy. It's like the research project from hell, only you lose everything if you fuck it up."

"Tell me about it," she said, anticipatory and excited. She was always so weird about research - it was almost like she got off on it or something. She'd drag every bit of information out of him that she could, and she'd start ratting off obscure, cross-disciplinary names and theories and going off on the most bizarre tangents and the entire thing would end up taking four hours and neither of them would get any sleep. "What do you actually know?"

He told her about pacts, and voudou spells to hold off hellhounds, and controlling demons by their true names, and the Key of Solomon, and about reading Faustus and listening to Robert Johnson and everything he could find that talked about deals with the devil. She asked about blood, and the anthropology of demons - were they French-Creole derived, or medieval European, or what? She asked about loopholes and logical fallacies and all the tricks of the law student toolbox. She asked him which demon? Or how many? What did he know for sure?

"Almost nothing," he told her ruefully. "The Crossroads Demon doesn't hold the contract. I don't know who does. I…I killed her anyway. Shot her."

Jess didn't say anything, and Sam held his breath. She'd never seen him shoot anything. He'd forgotten that it might freak her out. What would he do if -

"So you can kill them?" she asked. "Then why not just shoot anything that moves when Dean's deal comes due? Sam, I want to ask you, are you sure you're okay? You never talked at all about your family, and then suddenly it's like losing your brother would be the end of your world, and you've dropped out of school, and you're in Ohio for god's sake, and -"

Sam grinned. "No, no, I'm okay. I…things were messed up, before, but Dean's great, you'd really like him. And, I mean, he's in this mess because of me. He could have left me dead, but he didn't. He's always looked after me, ever since I was a tiny little kid. I owe him this."

Her voice was gentle. "I know, but I want to make sure that you're happy. That you still have some of your own dreams."

"Honestly?" He laughed again, but it sounded more than a little bit bitter. "At this point, all I want is for things to go back to the way they were. I just want to be with my brother, do my job, maybe make the world a better place in some small way. I don't think," he added hoarsely, "that I could go back to school. It wouldn't be the same without you there. God, Jess, I miss you so much."

"But you shouldn't give up Stanford just because of me," she said insistently. "Sam, you need to live for yourself, you need to do what you want to, not think about me or your brother or -"

He exploded; he couldn't help it. All his closed, dark spaces had been suddenly exposed to the sunlight, and he felt intoxicated and reckless and over-stimulated. "Jess, for Christ's sake, it's because of me that you're dead, and it's because of me that my brother is going to hell, and there's something wrong with me, Jessica, I'm not even really human."

She was breathing heavily. For a moment, silence resounded over the line. "Oh, Sam," she said at last. "Oh, God, baby, it's all right. Sam, I'm so sorry I left you, I didn't mean to, but you have to try and be all right. It hurts me so much to think of you like this, Sam, and I can't help but wonder why your brother lets you suffer. How can he, if he loves you the way he says he does? If he loves you as much as you love him? Sam, you're giving up everything for him, and I feel like it's destroying you."

"This has been such an awful year," Sam told her quietly. "It's like Dean doesn't even want to live. He won't let me save him, and he's going to go to hell, and I don't know what I'll do without him."

"Darling," she said. "My darling, you'll save him. You've always been so smart, Sam, you'll figure it out. But, Sam, even if you don't…you don't need him to be happy. People die, sometimes, and the world goes on. You have to promise me that you'll go on, baby."

"Jess, you don't understand. My family…we're not like you, Jess, we're not normal. We never have been. My mother died, and then everything was different. If Dean - goes to hell - I'll be the only one left. I'll be alone."

"You're never alone," she cooed. "I'm always with you, love. I'm always beside you."

"Jess…"

The phone went dead.

*

When Sam woke up the next morning, it was like everything was falling apart. Dean was going on about some exorcism that he was convinced would save him from the Crossroad Demon. He'd been tearing Sam a new one for months for the work he'd been doing, busting his ass to break the deal, and then as soon as the spirit of their father gave him some fancy Latin Dean was off.

He was trying to figure out what exactly Dean's exorcism contained, translating the Latin and googling for its origins, when his phone rang. Sam's heart leapt - it was Jess, she was back, she'd help him figure out what to do about his brother going crazy and showering him in archaic church Latin - but it was Lainey. It took him a minute to remember who she was. The little girl. Her dead mother. She'd been talking to her. The kid sounded scared out of her wits. "You said I could call you?" she faltered.

"Yeah," he said. "What's going on? You okay?"

Turns out she really wasn't, and he ended up driving over to her house and spending the next two hours counseling a sobbing kid who couldn't figure out why her mom wanted her to commit suicide. It was not shaping up to be a good day.

After coaxing Lainey into a few watery smiles, leaving her with her little brother and a strict admonition to stay away from her phone and her computer, Sam made it out at last. The shoulder of his jacket was damp - he'd thought she was never going to stop crying. He sent Bobby a quick text of Dean's supposedly all-powerful exorcism, and was on his way back to the motel when his phone rang, and the caller id told him it was Jess.

He picked up. "Jess, are you there?"

"Yeah, Sam, it's me. Are you okay, baby? You sound kind of ruffled."

"I've just had a kind of intense morning, is all. Jessica, do you have any idea what's going on? How you can call me all of a sudden? Because I've been talking to this little girl who's communicating with her dead mom, and she almost ended up committing suicide, and a few days ago some banker actually went ahead with it and ate his gun. All these people who are talking with the dead…it's messing them all up, Jess, and I'm worried about you."

She sounded earnestly puzzled. "That's awful, about the little girl. No, I don't know what's…I don't know how I'm doing it. It's like all of a sudden I just knew how to find you, and there's nothing I wanted more than to hear you speak again." Her voice grew soft and sweet, and she added, "Your voice has gotten deeper, you know that? It's sexy."

He sighed, and leaned his head against the cool glass of the rental car window. "Jess, I don't want you mixed up in anything. I've already killed you once. I don't want to hurt you again."

"You could never hurt me, baby. It's why I love you. I've never met a gentler, sweeter man than you, Sam darling. You my dear, inspire abso-lute confidence," she said decidedly, her voice rising into a saccharinely accented singsong.

"That's from 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' isn't it?"

"It always was my favorite," she said laughingly. "But it's still true."

"Dean thinks he's talking to our dad. He thinks he's found an exorcism that will save him from his deal."

"But you don't believe him?"

"Jess, this whole situation is crazy! Every single person we know of who's received phone calls from dead loved ones has killed themselves or gone nuts, and now Dean's talking like he's crazy - I mean, he's been trying to talk me out of breaking this deal for almost a year now, and then suddenly he gets this phone call and it's full speed in reverse? None of this makes sense. I love you. I don't want to lose you," he said miserably. "But I'm not going to kill myself, or let Dean do something he's going to regret, either."

Jess drew in breath to speak, and then the call ended like a cut throat.

*

Later, trussed up to a chair and watching the crocotta eat poor, grubby Stewie, Sam wondered how he could have been such a blind, stupid, wishful fool. The light at the end of the tunnel was hellfire. He knew that. Jessica was dead, and Dean was going to die. Because of course the exorcism was no good either.

*

She hadn't spoken, in the moment when she hung pinned to the ceiling before she caught light. But in his dreams, where the fire consuming her body was bright, hot blue and not the yellow color of her hair, her mouth moved and shaped words, and she called to him, and asked him questions without answers.

*

Dean was exhausted - he'd stayed up the entire night before, waiting for a damn phone call and being an idiot. But he jolted out of sleep almost instantly when he heard Sam cry out. It had been a long time since he'd heard Sam make a noise like that in his sleep, but he hadn't forgotten how much he hated that muted, strangled yell.

Stumbling in the dark over to Sam's bed, he shook the kid's shoulder. "Sammy," he mumbled, "Come on, wake up It's just a dream."

Sam sat up with a gasp, breathing hard, maybe trembling a little. "Dean?" he said.

"Yeah, Sammy, 's me. Bad dream?"

Sam buried his head in his hands. "God, yeah."

Dean put a hand on his little brother's back, rubbing in small, slow circles. "Just a dream, Sam."

"Mmm hmm, I know. It's just - Dean, I'm sorry."

Dean drew back, startled a little. "What for?"

Sam sighed, and his head sank lower. "For not - not helping you, with everything. With dad. It must have been hard for you."

"Nah, it's okay," Dean told him. "Look, I know everything's a mess right now. I'm screwed up, and I know you're not really okay either, but. Man," he said, reaching up to tousle Sam's hair violently, and grinning when Sam made a small noise of protest and batted his hand away, "you can write me that poem tomorrow, and, I don't know, like, recite it in some incredibly girly way. Ode to Dean Winchester, or something like that."

Sam snorted softly. "There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence," he said.

"Dude, you are so completely weird in every way. Go the hell to sleep, you freaky bitch."


End file.
